THE PATRONYMIC YEARS

Understanding Polish Jewish RecordsThat Have No Family Names

Until the late 18th century or early 19th century  depending on the area --
there were no family names used in Polish-Jewish records.
As a result, it has been impractical to include the indices to such records in the Jewish
Records Indexing-Poland database that is based on surname searches.

Jewish Records Indexing  Poland is now addressing the
problem of these early records of Poland that do not contain family names, often referred
to as "patronymic" records.

In addition to the post-1825 Jewish vital records
filmed by the Mormons (LDS), there are typically mixed Catholic / Protestant / Jewish
records in the 1808-1825 period for the Kingdom of Poland and earlier for areas such as
the former Galician province.

Patronymic records

Because the indexes during this period contain few, if any, Jewish surnames;
it is necessary to look at each registration (the entire record) in
full in order to determine possible relationships. By extracting the given names of the
father, mother and paternal and maternal grandfathers, researchers may be able -- through
deduction  to determine if a record could possibly be for their family and perhaps
even move their family search back a generation or two.

Jewish Records Indexing - Poland has Patronymic data on the following towns. Click on the town's link
below to view the file. [The files are in Microsoft Excel version 5.0 format].
If you have a questions about the town's data or can derive a surname from the information
provided then e-mail the town contact listed below. You may also need an Eastern Europe
Roman font

To find out more about how to understand and index
records without family names, click here.

Surviving records less than 100 years old are held in the Civil Records Offices (Urzad Stanu Cywilnego)
of each town.

For information on the 20th century records available for your town, visit the
Routes to Roots Foundation website,
CLICK ON THE 'SEARCH DATABASE' button (on the right side) and enter the town name.
Look for the town name in the Repository/City column of the search results. There are typically links to
lists of available births, marriage and death records for the town.

Note, however, the Routes to Roots Foundation database may indicate turn of the century records that have already been
transferred to the appropriate branch of the Polish State Archives where they can be indexed for the
JRI-Poland database.

JRI-Poland is an independent non-profit tax-exempt Organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

Under special arrangement, the JRI-Poland web site, mailing list, and database are hosted by JewishGen